nd passing by ranches;
nevertheless, I did not like the looks of the horsemen and grew uneasy.
Still, I scarcely thought it needful to race our horses just to reach
town a little ahead of these strangers.

Accordingly, they soon caught up with us.

They were five in number, all dark-faced except one, dark-clad and
superbly mounted on dark bays and blacks. They had no pack animals and,
for that matter, carried no packs at all.

Four of them, at a swinging canter, passed us, and the fifth pulled his
horse to suit our pace and fell in between Sally and me.

"Good day," he said pleasantly to me. "Don't mind my ridin' in with
you-all, I hope?"

Considering his pleasant approach, I could not but be civil.

He was a singularly handsome fellow, at a quick glance, under forty
years, with curly, blond hair, almost gold, a skin very fair for that
country, and the keenest, clearest, boldest blue eyes I had ever seen in
a man.

"You're Russ, I reckon," he said. "Some of my men have seen you ridin'
round with Sampson's girls. I'm Jack Blome."

He did not speak that name with any flaunt or flourish. He merely stated
it.

Blome, the rustler! I grew tight all over.

Still, manifestly there was nothing for me to do but return his
pleasantry. I really felt less uneasiness after he had made himself
known to me. And without any awkwardness, I introduced him to the girls.

He took off his sombrero and made gallant bows to both.

Miss Sampson had heard of him and his record, and she could not help a
paleness, a shrinking, which, however, he did not appear to notice.
Sally had been dying to meet a real rustler, and here he was, a very
prince of rascals.

But I gathered that she would require a little time before she could be
natural. Blome seemed to have more of an eye for Sally than for Diane.
"Do you like Pecos?" he asked Sally.

"Out here? Oh, yes, indeed!" she replied.

"Like ridin'?"

"I love horses."

Like almost every man who made Sally's acquaintance, he hit upon the
subject best calculated to make her interesting to free-riding, outdoor
Western men.

That he loved a thoroughbred horse himself was plain. He spoke naturally
to Sally with interest, just as I had upon first meeting her, and he
might not have been Jack Blome, for all the indication he gave of the
fact in his talk.

But the look of the man was different. He was a desperado, one of the
dashing, reckless kind--more famous along the Pecos and Rio Gran